...It is left to the queen to produce all the eggs which will eventually develop into new bees for the colony. A new queen (under two weeks old) will mate, in the air, with several (5-15) drones. The drone then dies, having given up an important part of his body in the process. The mating takes place when the queen leaves her hive, flies about 50 to 100 metres high and several kilometres from her home. She has an odour which the boys apparently find attractive because they follow her in great number, in competition for the opportunity to die for the queen, as it were. The fact that this act occurs with multiple donors and far afield has made it difficult for bee breeders to maintain pure or specialized stock. (In the past few years artificial insemination has been used to develop special lines and hybrids. I'll omit the details, but it involves a syringe and a very tiny anesthetizing unit.) The naturally mated queen returns to the hive and will produce hundreds of thousands of off-spring without ever mating again. The queen can lay eggs which are fertile (using the stuff gathered earlier in her life from the donors) or unfertile. Unfertile eggs develop into healthy baby boys (drone bees) which contain Mom's DNA only, because the guys are haploids (half set of chromosomes). Therefore, drones have no father. But they do have a grandfather, on the Mom's side, because Mom, the queen, developed from a fertilized egg, which means there was a guy involved, even though he was long dead by the time the new queen was born. You can see why nature forces the queen to multiple mate once, far from her home colony. If she stayed home or mated over several months or years, she might be mating with drones which contained DNA identical to her own - in effect, she'd be mating with herself. For the exceptionally curious, we need to resolve the problem of the other females, those thousands of workers in the colony. These poor gals also come from fully fertile eggs. But during those important formative days that we all go through, between larva and pupa stage, the worker bee is denied royal jelly. Without royal jelly in the early diet, the female does not get to be fully functional- she gets a sharper stinger, instead. She also only lives a few weeks while her royally fed sister gets to live for three or four years. Hence, the conclusion that if we all ate royal jelly we could live to be three thousand years old, or at least we could all lay eggs. Now, aren't you sorry you asked?

When the little bluebird Who has never said a word Starts to sing SpringWhen the little bluebell At the bottom of the dell Starts to ring Ding dong Ding dong When the little blue clerk In the middle of his work Starts a tune to the moon up above It is nature that is all Simply telling us to fall in love

And that's why birds do it, bees do itEven educated fleas do it Let's do it, let's fall in love

Cold Cape Cod clams, 'gainst their wish, do it Even lazy jellyfish do it Let's do it, let's fall in love

I've heard that lizards and frogs do it Layin' on a rock They say that roosters do it With a doodle and cock

Some Argentines, without means do it I hear even Boston beans do it Let's do it, let's fall in love

When the little bluebird Who has never said a word starts to sing Spring spring spring When the little bluebell At the bottom of the dell Starts to ring Ding ding ding When the little blue clerk In the middle of his work Starts a tune

The most refined lady bugs do it When a gentleman calls Moths in your rugs they do it What's the use of moth balls

The chimpanzees in the zoos do it, Some courageous kangaroos do it Let's do it, let's fall in love

I'm sure sometimes on the sly you do it Maybe even you and I might do it Let's do it, let's fall in love

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